The Not-So-Grim Reaper

HOME IS WHERE THE UNDERWEAR IS

2 HOME IS WHERE THE UNDERWEAR IS

“I can’t believe I didn’t get it,” I said.

Jay, my housemate and best friend in the whole wide world, played Tetris on his phone as I paced a trench into our two-bedroom apartment’s floor. Considering the state of the untreated wood, the next step could very well be its last. I liked to live on the wild side of life.

“To tell me I have no experience writing greeting cards.” I fumed, smacking the solid-oak bookshelf and regretting it immediately. “I’ve written hundreds, if not thousands, of ads, and let me not get started on the countless Harry Potter fan fiction stories. Why wouldn’t I be able to write two lines of text wishing someone’s grandmother a happy hundredth birthday?”

“Sorry, dude,” Jay mumbled in between the beeping sounds on his phone.

“I mean, I died for this job…and I still didn’t get it.”

“Yeah, man,” Jay said, never lifting his eyes from the blitzing screen. “You did prepare quite hard for this job. You even polished your shoes and wore a snazzy tie.”

I gesticulated wildly, since nothing screamed anger more than flailing limbs. “No, man, I actually died for it.”

Jay put down his phone, tightened the top knot in his frizzy hair, and stared at me. “You died for it?”

I stopped pacing for a second, looking back at him as he sank further into the couch’s sagging cushions. “Well, maybe not really for it, but I did die.”

“Like literally die?”

“Like”—I dragged my thumb across my throat—“that kind of dead.”

Jay twirled his scruffy beard, hiding the morning’s cornflakes further into his valley of bushy hair. “Did you hit the sauce a little bit too much? I can understand if you went and got hammered after the interview. I probably would’ve done the same thing, too.”

Like a petulant child demanding to watch an R-rated film, I stomped my feet. Almost right through the wooden floor. Thankfully, it didn’t because our landlord would’ve complained like he did when our roof collapsed due to the thunderstorms. “No, I died. Like smacked my head into the corner of the receptionist’s desk and kicked the proverbial bucket died.”

Jay’s eyebrow touched his receded hairline. “Your head looks fine to me, bro.”

“That’s because a grim reaper brought me back to life and gave me a second chance.” As soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I regretted it. Who in the world would believe such a thing?

The corner of Jay’s mouth twitched as he poorly suppressed his smirk. “The grim reaper?”

Well, it was too late to deny it now, so I went for broke and prayed our decade-long friendship would prevent him from calling the loony bin on me. “No, a grim reaper. His name’s Gee.”

Jay hopped to his feet and gestured for me to approach him. Confused, I shuffled over to him. He wrapped his tree stump arms around me and squeezed the bejesus out of me.

“Claudio, it’ll be okay,” he said, gently stroking my head the same way I used to do to my Ninja Turtle plush toy while telling it that it’s my best friend.

“What…are…you…talking…about?” I spluttered as I struggled to escape his vice-like grip.

“The stress has hit you and made you a little”—he paused—“depressed. So you’re obviously imagining things to help you cope with the reality of it all.”

I wrestled my way out of his hold, unfortunately catching a whiff of his musk-and-sweat drenched armpit in the process. I didn’t want his pity, even if I’d taken advantage of his late father’s inheritance during this challenging time. Jay had never worked a day in his life, so he didn’t understand what I was going through. “I’m not stressed at all. I’m just saying that I’ve the worst luck in the world.”

A knock rattled the door, interrupting my pity party.

“Are you expecting someone?” Jay asked.

“Nope,” I said. “You?”

“Not that I can recall.”

The knocking persisted, but louder and faster this time.

“Coming,” I replied.

The furious knocking continued.

“Jeez! Hold your horses. I said I’m coming already.”

As soon as I slid the chain off the door and turned the lock, the door smacked me in the face. The numbness spread its unmistakable touch across every nerve point.

“Son of a—” I cursed, holding my bloodied nose.

Jay grabbed the baseball bat from behind the couch, but stabbed his finger on a splinter. The bat crashed to the floor as he sucked on his poor thumb instead.

“Oh, no. I’m terribly sorry. Claude, I don’t mean to be insensitive or anything but please shut the door, as in right now,” the intruder said, rushing in.

That voice. I closed the door and pinched my nose to prevent the blood from adding another stain to our already decorated floor. “How did you know where I live?” I asked in a nasal voice, like one of those hair metal singers from eighties.

Hands on hips, the black-cloaked, gaunt figure asked, “Do we really need to go over this again?”

An unsettling noise, a sickening combination of a howling yelp and a barbaric fart, erupted from Jay. He collapsed back onto the couch, knees to his chest, with his quivering finger extended.

“It’s pretty rude to point at people, you know?” Gee said to him.

“D-d-d-death,” Jay stuttered.

“No.” Gee sighed. “I’m not Death. Death is a grumpy, old sod. I’m actually offended by that comparison.”

Shaken like Bond’s martini, Jay refused to take his widening eyes off our uninvited guest. The only other time I’d seen him this genuinely frightened was when he’d dropped his banjo down a flight of stairs and shrieked as it hit every step. It didn’t survive, by the way.

“Jay, this is Gee, the grim reaper I told you about earlier,” I said to my petrified friend.

“A grim reaper, C-dog,” Gee said. “Pleased to meet you, Jay.” He fist bumped Jay’s still extended, trembling finger. He looked around the apartment and ran his fingers down the Beetlejuice figurine on top of the television stand. “Nice place you have here.”

Turning my attention back to Gee, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“It’s really…um…how do you say? It’s a funny story.”

“I don’t want the funny story.” His waffling tested my patience. “I want the short version.”

He sighed. “Okay, so you remember how I kind of brought you back to life?”

“Of course I do. It was a pretty big deal for me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not really allowed to.” He discreetly peeped out of the curtains. “It’s kind of illegal in my circle.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t report it.”

“I didn’t, but someone”—he glared a burning hole through me—“told someone else about it, despite me explicitly asking him not to.”

The guilt littered my face. “Oh, I didn’t…”

“I know you did.”

“But I only told my housemate, and he didn’t even believe me. Right, Jay?”

Jay said nothing, sitting with his mouth open, catching flies.

Gee glanced out of the second window that overlooked the busy Witkoppen Road. “Even so, there’s a reason why I told you not to tell anyone. Those snoopy bureaucrats are always listening in on your human conversations and heard you say you were brought back to life. That’s a high-alert phrase for them. Once those alarm bells started ringing, I hit the road faster than you can say ‘cowabunga, dude’.”

“You got here pretty quick. I only told him about it like five minutes ago.”

“Oh,” he said with a tinge of uncertainty in his voice, “well, it’s one of the benefits of being a grim reaper: We never have traffic.”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say or do. “So now what? Are your bosses going to fine you or give you a disciplinary hearing or something?”

“The Dead Council? Not a chance! They’re going to send me to the single worst place in the universe if they catch me.”

“Hell?”

“No! The Room of Torture. A dark, dark place where they play cheesy rock ballads and force you to relive the classic weddings from soap operas for all eternity.”

The tremble in his voice genuinely scared me. “That sounds awful. I’m so sorry. What are you going to do?”

“You mean, what are we going to do?”

The royal we. Oh, how it always came up when someone was in deep trouble and wanted to drag your butt into it too. “Hang on a second”—I pouted—“what do I have to do with this?”

He hopped onto the kitchen counter and sat cross-legged, showing off his extra lean legs. “I saved you, so you owe me.”

“I didn’t ask you to save me. You could’ve let me die.”

Gee reached for the chef’s knife on the counter. All my insides conglomerated in my stomach, circling around in a pit of fear. But the fear swiftly morphed into aggravation when the scoundrel used my expensive knife to pick something out of his teeth.

“Claude, you’re my only hope. The only way I can avoid the Room of Torture is if I stick with you.”

Disgusted, I snatched the knife from him, wiped it on my shirt, and stashed it away inside a drawer. “I thought your kind could read minds. It won’t take them long to figure out where you are.”

“We’re strictly prohibited from doing so.”

“Then, what about my mind?”

“What about it?”

“You read it!”

“It’s also frowned upon.”

“But you do it.”

He shrugged. “Look, we’re supposed to leave the living alone, so they won’t dare show up at a living person’s doorstep. It’s like a magician explaining how the tricks work. That’ll kill his entire mystique and no one will believe in it anymore. So, in short, they’ll stay away from you, and in turn me too. It’s a win-win for us all.”

“Technically, you shouldn’t interfere with me, either,” I argued.

“You’re being difficult.” His sunken eyes deepened further. “Did I or didn’t I bring you back to life?”

I sighed. “You did.”

“Did I or didn’t I get you the job?”

I looked at my feet. “I didn’t get it.”

“What? Wow, man, you really do have the worst luck in the world. You were even brought back to life and you still didn’t…” He scratched his skull. “Regardless, we have a bond. It’s like those cultures where someone saves your life, and you’re bound to them forever. That’s us. We’re brolives for life.”

I rubbed my temples. The more he spoke, the more it became apparent that he wasn’t about to leave any time soon, and I had no clue what to do. Was this the price I had to pay for making a proverbial deal with the devil?

“Do you mind if I take off my hood?” Gee asked.

“No, go ahead.”

“You’re super cool. Some folks get freaked out by the dome, know what I’m saying?”

No, I didn’t understand, any of it, but I politely nodded anyways, hoping he’d behave himself and not use another one of my utensils to groom himself.

Gee pulled the hood off his head, showcasing his ivory-coloured skull, which featured a tattoo of a machine gun on each temple. “By the way, is there something wrong with your friend? Is he brain-dead or something? He hasn’t stopped pointing since I got here. If he died of shock, I’m sorry to say but I’m not bringing another human back to life today. I have enough problems on my plate.”

I glanced at Jay, thinking if I’d added some flowers, soil and sunshine he’d make the perfect garden gnome, even if we didn’t have a garden. “Hey.” I snapped my fingers in front of him. “Wakey-wakey.”

“Wait,” Gee said, sliding off the counter. “I know a trick that always works.” He strolled up to Jay and yanked on his beard. With his free hand, he slapped Jay so hard I even flinched for him.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Jay seethed, rubbing the bright red fingerprints across his cheek.

“Oh, good. You’re with us again,” Gee said. “And you’re welcome.” He swivelled back to me. “So where’s my room?”

“Excuse me?” I said, my voice shrilling up an octave.

“My room. My own private space to rest and to watch reruns of Rick and Morty. Now that’s a quality show. Even my colleagues at the Dead Council voted it as show of the decade. Speaking of which, do you have a laptop I can use to watch my shows? I don’t really like regular TV since I prefer to surf the net while watching a show. Multitasking and all.”

Not wanting to be the bad guy, but yearning for someone else to say no, I looked to Jay, who looked back at me and shrugged.

“Gee, we don’t really have any more room here,” I said.

“That’s cool. I’ll just crash here on the couch then.” He hurled himself onto the couch, nearly snapping the last spring and almost landing on the jittery Jay’s lap. “I think this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful brolationship.” He put his arm around Jay. “They’ll even create a TV series about us: Two Guys and a Dead Man. But it’ll actually be a funny show without the need for a laugh track, recycled jokes and a cast of has-been models-turned-actors.”

With me observing the happy and talkative grim reaper on the couch, one question crossed my mind: Would I have been better off dead?

“And one more favour, C-dog,” he said.

My heart throbbed in my throat, as I dreaded his next request. “What?”

“Can I borrow some clean underwear, please? I forgot mine at home.”